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The Bijou Theatre is a theater located in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Built in 1909 as an addition to the Lamar House Hotel, the theater has at various times served as performance venue for traditional theatre, vaudeville, a second-run moviehouse, a commencement stage for the city's African-American high school, and a pornographic movie theater. The Lamar House Hotel, in which the theater was constructed, was originally built in 1817, and modified in the 1850s. The building and theater were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.〔Dean Novelli, "On a Corner of Gay Street: A History of the Lamar House—Bijou Theater, Knoxville, Tennessee, 1817 – 1985." East Tennessee Historical Society ''Publications'', Vol. 56 (1984), pp. 3-45.〕 The Lamar House Hotel was built by Irish immigrant Thomas Humes (1767–1816) and his descendants, and quickly developed into a gathering place for Knoxville's wealthy. In 1819, Andrew Jackson became the first of five presidents to lodge at the hotel, and in the 1850s, local businessmen purchased and expanded the building into a lavish 250-room complex.〔 During the Civil War, the Union Army used the hotel as a hospital for its war wounded, among them General William P. Sanders, who died at the hotel in 1863. Following the war, the hotel became the center of Knoxville's Gilded Age extravagance, hosting lavish masquerade balls for the city's elite.〔〔''Knoxville: Fifty Landmarks.'' (Knoxville: The Knoxville Heritage Committee of the Junior League of Knoxville, 1976), p. 15.〕 In 1909, the rear wing of the building was replaced by the Bijou Theatre structure, entered through a new lobby cut through the hotel building from Gay Street. The theater opened on March 8, 1909, and over the next four decades would host performers such as the Marx Brothers, Dizzy Gillespie, John Philip Sousa, the Ballets Russes, Ethel Barrymore, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, John Cullum, and Houdini. After a period of decline in the 1960s and early 1970s, local preservationists purchased the building and renovated the theater.〔 ==Design== The Bijou Theatre building consists of two parts— the original hotel section, completed in 1817, and the rear theater section, built in 1909. The main entrance opens into a foyer, from which the rear theater section and the building's front corner wings are accessed (the south corner wing is occupied by a restaurant, The Bistro). From the foyer, the rear entrance opens into a bar, with passageways to the left and right leading to the theater's orchestra floor, and stairways to the left and right accessing the theater's balconies and the original building's second floor (now offices for the theater). The building's facade was probably designed in the Georgian style, but its original appearance was extensively altered in the 1850s. Many of these alterations resulted from the macadamizing of Gay Street in 1854. The grading of the street during this period exposed the hotel's cellar, which was subsequently converted into the main entrance.〔 The theater has a capacity of approximately 700, with two balcony levels. There are two loggia levels and three box levels on each side of the building. The stage is deep and wide. The theater is decorated with notable Classical Revival elements, which include Corinthian columns supporting the box levels, reclining muse pediments above the top box levels, and grape-and-vine motifs adorning the front of the boxes and balconies.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bijou Theatre (Knoxville)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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